The National Systems Contractors Association (NSCA) has announced the winners of its 2013 Excellence in Business Awards, which honor companies and their efforts to “apply strategies today to be profitable tomorrow.”

“This is an impressive group of integrators who are receiving this recognition,” says Chuck Wilson, NSCA executive director. “We had more nominations than ever before, proving that integrators are becoming creative in their business success. These integrators recognize the value being innovative, financially responsible, and educated, which offers their customers a superior level of service.”

NSCA provides the following synopses for the winning companies:

Advanced AV has excelled in Marketing Strategies, and is now a better resource to their client base due to social networking. Focusing on specific platforms they have reached different markets and clients. Advanced AV receives insight that allows them to determine specific networking groups to gain ideas on support and technical assistance, identify knowledge and technology to be utilized in the workplace and provide better workflow. Additionally, they have worked with managers and employees to be engaged in social media by incentivizing them to blog, learn and understand each platform and how to use it to benefit the company and its employees.

Avidex receives the Recurring Revenue award for providing a variety of service offerings including various degrees of service and support, one of which provides a dedicated on-site service representative. With more than 26 full-time employees in the service department alone, they provide on-site staffing for companies like Adobe, Boeing, Cisco, Citrix, Genentech and Network Appliance. Their levels of support are customized to meet their customers’ needs including options to provide a guaranteed response within 4 hours, in addition to offering service contracts with terms from 1 to 3 years. This commitment to service contributed $3.7 million in recurrent revenue to Avidex’s sales in 2011 and $4.3 million in 2012.

Communications Engineering Company (CEC), recognized for their Professional Development, created a 10-month Leadership Development Program (LDP) with a mission to educate, motivate, and develop current and future leaders. Each year, 8 to 12 CEC employees are selected. This group represents different aspects and geographic locations of the CEC business. Managed by a senior leader, an outside consultant and associate professor, 8 to 12 employees are chosen each year to participate in the LDP that focuses on learning about CEC as a business, developing personal leadership skills, and impacting positive change.

Interactive Digital Solutions, winner for Growth Strategies, took an innovative approach to cloud-based video service offerings. They recognized the potential to provide customers access to the latest video technology due to an insatiable demand for implementing video solutions. Having created a services division chartered with designing, developing and launching new offerings including video bridging, video conferencing and stream replication, the company developed partnerships with the leading technology businesses from the industry to ensure service offerings remained on the leading edge. They grew their professional services and support department which led to immediate results – keeping headcount stable while increasing service revenues 50% quarterly.

Xerox Audio Visual Solutions, honored for Fiscal Responsibility, received the highest fiscal recognition rating in 2012 from their parent company due to their financial, operations and IT departments diligently focused on improved client relations through internal controls and enhanced workflow. This effort required building infrastructure to support our offerings in system design, engineering, installation, IT infrastructure, managed services and investment protection for its clients. Throughout the transition, the company kept financials controls and streamlined processes for the clients and employees.

Yorktel, recognized for Growth Strategies, remained persistent in striving to stay on the leading edge of innovation. This brought significant growth in all sectors including bridging technologies related to video conferencing, particularly in mobility, BYOD, and interoperability. The company’s thought leadership, vision and growth in these areas, as well as its video managed services and cloud solutions portfolio, earned Yorktel numerous awards and notable rankings from industry analyst organizations and publications. With an eye on the rapidly changing trends in video conferencing, unified communications, and visual collaboration, Yorktel adapted to its customers’ evolving requirements to provide solutions that increase productivity and efficiency, while lowering capital expenditures.

Steve is an editor for commercialintegrator.com. He graduated from Emerson College with a B.A. in Journalism. He joined EH Publishing in 2008. Steve is also a freelance sports writer for The Boston Globe and other various publications.